Managed Extensibility Framework

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MEF is now on CodePlex along with full source. You can get to it here http://www.codeplex.com/MEF. At the site you can start discussions as well as add new workitems, and vote on existing. The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a new library in .NET that enables greater reuse of applications and components. Using MEF, .NET applications can make the shift from being statically compiled to dynamically composed. If you are building extensible applications, extensible frameworks and application extensions, then MEF is for you.
Last edited Nov 18 2008 at 3:04 PM by gblock, version 12
Comments Rajiv wrote Jun 5 2008 at 7:49 AM Kudos brettryan wrote Jun 18 2008 at 9:05 AM This certainly looks interesting, I'm wondering how this relates to both P&P Composite WPF (formerly Prism) and the P&P Unity dependancy injection container. Are there distinct use cases for Composite WPF and MEF or are the two projects blurred in terms of goals? mnmr wrote Jun 24 2008 at 4:37 PM I'd like to second brettryan's comment.. where does this project fit in the broader landscape of existing DI/IoC frameworks? gblock wrote Jun 27 2008 at 11:36 PM @mnmr, @brettryan MEF is focused on application extensibility. It uses DI as a strategy for composing the different extensions, however it is not in itself a generic DI container. Composite Application Guidance for WPF is a set of guidance for building Composite Applications in WPF. While it does have a module loading facility for extensibility, the type of extensibilty it offers is very specific for composite applications. Conceptually MEF should be able to live side by side with the Composite Application Library (CAL) included with the guidance. p&p is going to explore how the two can work together. Would you imagine needing this? If so, why? As far as the use cases, I would say. 1. If you are looking to build a composite application with WPF, use Composite WPF. 2. If you are looking to build an application with built in extensiblity points that can easily be discovered, and which supports discovery of extensions, then look to MEF Thanks Glenn gmelnik wrote Jul 5 2008 at 5:05 AM ...and 3. If you are building a loosely-coupled application and looking for looking for a generic DI container to delegate the responsibility of creating/resolving the objects as needed, use Unity (http://msdn.microsoft.com/unity). wmpjohnston wrote Jul 21 2008 at 3:28 AM @Glenn I'd really like to see some guidance from P&P on building WPF apps with MEF. Is this on P&P's radar? My understanding is that MEF streamlines add-in management and DI for Windows apps? BTW, congrats on the new job. redhotsly wrote Dec 15 2008 at 7:08 PM > however it is not in itself a generic DI container. Hi, Can you explain why MEF should not be used also as a generic DI container? joewood72 wrote Mar 11 2009 at 2:21 PM I would like to echo that question. Given that MEF will be in .NET 4 will a future version of Unity be built ontop of the MEF attributes? I consider an extension framework to 'unknown components' to be a superset of an composite framework for 'known components'. Will PRISM have a MEF bootstrapper? Sign in to add a comment

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